In Other Days
by the anomaly
Summary: Future!AU. After an attack, Kurt has trouble remembering, and Blaine can't forget. A romanticized treatment of anterograde amnesia.


Disclaimer: Not real, not mine, not making money from this.

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><p><em>A tale begun in other days,<br>When summer suns were glowing–  
>A simple chime, that served to time<br>The rhythm of our rowing–  
>Whose echoes live in memory yet,<br>Though envious years would say 'forget'.  
><em>–Lewis Carroll, _Through the Looking Glass_

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><p>When they leave the party, Kurt has Blaine on his arm. That's actually an understatement, because Blaine is beyond wasted and really has half his weight leaning on Kurt and the other half on his trailing left foot that makes its protest heard every few minutes by knocking into some random object on the pavement. It is very late and they've decided to make their way back to Kurt's place. It shouldn't be a problem, Kurt thinks, what with his apartment being only two blocks away. The darkness that envelopes them is silent and benign.<p>

They're getting along just fine when Blaine begins a rendition of _Fever_ (the Peggy Lee original and not the Adam Lambert one, although both are equally embarrassing if you're the object of a drunken serenade), complete with extremely off-beat finger snaps (well at least he's _trying_) and long, drawled-out notes. Kurt hushes him, although his attempt is half-hearted at best.

"_Fever_!" Blaine yells, (Kurt admires how he keeps his head voice in place even under such circumstances, but never mind), "fever when you–when, I want to–" at which he pauses, and leans precariously over to Kurt's starboard and whispers something very naughty into his ear.

"Blaine! That's just—" _gross_, he would like to say, but, really, the way their lips are sliding in place now is everything but wrong and Kurt is smiling toothlessly and Blaine is icing over his smile with something warm and he has his back against a wall that has conveniently appeared out of nowhere–

Suddenly he is falling towards Blaine, his legs splinter like twigs beneath him, he is falling and he can see Blaine's eyes widen as he is tossed into catalytic sobriety and his arms are out trying to shield him but something sharp and cruel contacts his head and for a split second everything is blindingly bright, his mind lurches, his back arches and the white snaps to darkness.

Then a voice in the dark, calling, "Kurt! Kurt!"

And that's all he remembers.

* * *

><p>Blaine remembers that, and much more. He remembers holding Kurt in his hands, falling down together with him onto the concrete, yelling. He remembers the deep-seated fear rising from his stomach, oh no, Kurt, oh no, oh no, drumming repetitively as he sat there, waiting for help to come, the sick sticky wetness in the crook of his elbow where Kurt's head was, his own person left unscathed save for those overlooked abrasions on his arms where the nurse daubed antiseptic with a cotton swab and he hadn't even felt a thing, the way his phone slipped from his trembling hands and the thud it made against the tarmac when he tried to dial for an ambulance, help us, please, help.<p>

There are also many blanks he has filled in on his own, how he thinks the entire thing was possibly, no, undoubtedly his fault, how he shouldn't have drawn attention to themselves by making out in the open, how he should be the one—, blanks that become bigger and bigger as he fills them in, consuming everything until they are nothing but themselves, a composite of blanks, that's all he is, today, staring at the door of Kurt's hospital ward, where the nurse beside him is saying something that ends with _youcangoinnow_, and through the blinds he can see Burt hovering about his son, and he makes to join them but his hand freezes in mid-motion at the door handle as his eye takes in through the little panel of glass this scene of reunion, from which he backs away, retreating into the cool calm safety that is his own guilt in the front lobby.

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><p>It's the tenth day. Out of all ten times he's come here since Kurt woke up, he's caught himself lingering reluctantly outside the ward just as many times. It was so much easier during the month-long vigil, keeping by his side when he was unresponsive, when all he had to do was just sleep on the sofa bed and hold his hand and remember what it was like to pray. Now, each visit has Kurt throwing at him an uncomfortable slew of questions that he has not the heart to answer. He doesn't know which he prefers, and hates himself for even trying to prefer one over the other. What was he thinking? Exchanging Kurt's safety with his own solace in passivity?<p>

Kurt sees him come through the door and exclaims, "You're all right!"

Blaine thinks they've got to do something to stop this dramatic realisation from recurring every time they meet. He smiles weakly, walks towards the bed.

"I was so worried about you," and gives him the once over before grabbing his hand, and for a second Blaine hesitates before he submits to it. He looks away, sorry for nothing, since Kurt is too overjoyed to detect it and continues to linger his hand over Blaine's anyway.

Blaine is the cynosure of Kurt's existence, not by choice but by default. The way he looks at him is like reading a compass while tossed on the high seas, clinging to this one certainty in a mutable world he cannot keep up with. It is fond now, and trusting. Soon Kurt will realise that his world will be constantly filtered through the people who will know more about him then he does about himself, who will tell him who he is, what he's supposed to do and when he's supposed to do it, and all of it will begin to stifle him and cause him grief. Blaine can see it now; he will hate the shackles of memory and this hate will spill over, blighting his love for the people around him.

But Kurt is still smiling and all Blaine can do is to mirror the smile and say, in as cheery a voice as possible, "Hey. Hey, darling."

* * *

><p>Blaine enters the room. From the door he can see the back of Kurt's head. Kurt is in comfortable loose cotton pants, sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by boxes. His hair has grown just long enough to cover the ugly jagged scar. Blaine sees it again, lives it through again. That cheesy saying harped on in movies about how you relive the scene over and over is not just a cliché. Running a hand through his own hair, the scalp smoothed and unmarked, he knows it's completely, painfully true.<p>

Kurt is sifting through old records. These days he's been on a rampage pulling out fossilised history and examining its contents. _Look, Blaine, it's Wicked!_, and then proceeding to sing both parts of _For Good_ (_and just look at you, you can do all I couldn't do_). He's discovering himself, Kurt likes to say. It's fine; when he's in a good mood, Blaine finds it amusing. On days like this, it borders on agony.

"Blaine, do you remember—"

(_if we let them_)

"No, I don't. Not today."

Kurt looks down to the ground.

"Back at Dalton, we—"

"Yes—"

(_but I know I'm who I am today_)

"We—"

"All right, Kurt. I apologise, all right? I'm just not myself today. At least not who you think I am. You can't keep—"

"I love you, Blaine. _You_. Why do you keep insisting otherwise?"

"Because that is not me!" he shouts. "Because I've _changed_! I'm no longer who you remember, some romanticised fantasy of me that you've got stuck in your brain and can't move on from!"

And Kurt's eyes smart as they do in recovery from a stinging slap across the face, "Well, it's not like I can help it, can I? You're all I remember. That _you_ is all I remember!"

(_because I knew you_)

"Then, just give it up! Because, because—" and then Blaine finally hits on the truth; it's a relief more than anything else to admit it, and he's no longer yelling, "because I don't deserve it."

* * *

><p>"Did you guys have a fight?"<p>

"No," he lies, then thinks, this is Kurt's dad, for god's sake, and he's so tired of lying, so he says, "Yes. No. Well, it wasn't really a fight,"

"I heard some raised voices."

Blaine is starting to regret this; it will wind up with a really awkward conversation with his boyfriend's dad on the couch which will be punctuated by the most torturous pauses and finally climax with his blubbering onto his own sleeve, the furniture, or worse of all, Burt's shoulder. It's the last thing he needs right now. He's about to make his escape when Burt says, "C'mere son," and Blaine knows there's no running away this time.

They're seated side by side on the sofa, which at least spares Blaine the spotlight of Burt's keen gaze upon him.

"You need to forget. Life should not be just a constant recollection of the past."

Blaine disagrees. If he doesn't remember, and Kurt doesn't remember, then who else would remember? At least there's some purpose in being a living record of every passing wrong.

"You need to forget, and then forget that you have forgotten."

And since when did Burt start sounding like Yoda, Blaine thinks, but knows too well than to interrupt.

"Also, you need to forget the right things."

(_who can say if I've been changed for the better?_)

"Actually, you and Kurt are in the same predicament. He can't remember anything else after the accident, and you force yourself not to remember anything _but_ the accident. Difference is, he's only doing so out of necessity but you're doing it out of choice. Also, Kurt has, should I say, the _benefit_ of being able to recall the good things from the past. Things you've willed yourself to think bygone."

(_but because I knew you_)

"Is it a blessing? I don't know. I do know that you have the benefit of remembering a future which you're not putting to good use. You have to stop thinking about yourself now. That's what you've been doing, making yourself the sole object of your thinking and—"

(_because I knew you_)

"—just removing yourself from the present and choosing to repeat that select part of history over and over until that's all that matters. You can't do that. You have to—"

"I tried to stop them; I did. I tried, I tried," Blaine says, knowing that it's the last time he can let himself say it is what drives the repetition. "I did, I tried, but I—"

And Burt says _I know_, or _Kurt knows_, but it does not matter, really, (_none of it seems to matter anymore_) because Blaine's told himself, enough is enough, and it's time he's forgiven himself, both of them, it's time they've forgiven themselves, even though Kurt, lying awake in the dark and overhearing everything, even if he could remember, would have said that there was nothing to forgive.

(_I have been changed  
>for good.<em>)

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><p>There is no healing, because there is no wound. There is no wound only because there is no memory of the wound. Life just is. Can you imagine living life only in present tense? Even if he can recount events of the past in absolute, accurate detail, the past as he remembers is useless because everything is constantly shifting like sand under the ocean's breath, what counts as the present now is already past, agglomerated into the past for everyone except him, he who clings on to a past that has become obsolete and irrelevant.<p>

Each day Kurt wakes up and (if he remembers, if not Blaine would remind him to) fumbles about for the book he reads first thing every morning to remind himself of who he is (I am Kurt Hummel and the first thing I need to remember is that I will remember none of this by the time I'm done reading), what he's been doing these past weeks and what the people around him have been planning (Blaine is heading downtown early tomorrow morning for an audition, his father is coming over in the afternoon, Rachel's show is opening in two weeks), and he sees life through these reminders as one does through a pair of convex lenses. One morning he chooses not to open the book at all. An obstinate part of him insists he can get by on his own; he can live life as it creates him, he doesn't need a stupid list of things to tell him who he is.

He gets an awful shock when he looks into the mirror and can't recognise himself.

Dragging himself back to the book, craving what it will explain yet loathing his reliance on it, he reads yesterday's entry: _Thursday, 16__th__ June, Haircut._

He throws the book on the bed, and as if that is not enough, dumps all the pillows on top of it, and goes back to the bathroom and resumes cleaning his teeth, just like every morning.

* * *

><p>"You should let me do something."<p>

"What?"

"Let me do something. Let me...cook dinner tonight."

"What? No." In his mind, scenes of Kurt forgetting to turn off the stove and forgetting even that the pan is hot and forgetting the—

"I can follow a recipe and tick off the steps as I go." He does not say, _just let me do something, anything_.

So Blaine reluctantly acquiesces, and Kurt sort of squeals in delight. An hour later, he asks Blaine, "Are we buying take-out for dinner?"

* * *

><p>One day Blaine arrives brandishing a new toy.<p>

"You've got to try it out! It's awesome!"

"What is this—wha—" as some black, oblong thing is hung around his neck and Kurt picks it up in his hands. "What is this? It is not at all fashionable."

"It's a Sensecam! It takes, like, pictures of your day, every thirty seconds, so you see, at the end of the day you'll have a record of what you've done, and going over the pictures will help you trigger a recall of past events." For a moment, Blaine's expression matches the one in Kurt's memories, the one with the incandescent glow about his face, the excited fanboy talking about the latest show on Broadway.

"Wait, wait, wait, slow down. So it takes pictures?"

"Just let me, uh, where's, where's the switch—"

There's a brief click, and later at night when Kurt peruses the pictures on his laptop, most of them will seem unfamiliar, blur after blur of colour and places, but as the frame loops right back to the start, there's a hilarious close-up of Blaine's face peering at the camera, his nose too large and his curls untamed. He is grinning, and Kurt is smiling, too.

* * *

><p>They are curled up on the couch with an old tape on the DVR. The quality is dodgy and sometimes it looks like it's snowing or like the show's being slowly overwritten by alien encryption, but, you know, it's Barbra Streisand, and it's a romance, and Kurt just wants to prove that he can still be moved by some tearjerker the same way he could always switch on the waterworks on movie nights. The last part is especially true.<p>

Scene after scene pile on top of each other and references (both overt and subtle) are all lost on Kurt. He fixes each significant plot development in his mind (mnemonics, method-of-loci, what-have-you) but nothing sticks, the tears that he wills to come evade his eyes. He laughs bitterly. That's the way life works, right? Regret is only possible if you can compare the past with the now, the now with the projected future one had in the past, and then measure the fall-out. Emotion is only possible if you can remember what it was that made you feel. How much of his happiness or sadness is authentic if he can never recall their designated causes?

The credits roll. The audio of the tape was not as clean and sharp as he would have liked it to be, but the flaws somehow lent a mellow gentleness to the song, as though even the tune had yielded to age and time.

"Don't tell me what it was all about. I'll admit, I've always taken for granted what it take watch a movie," Kurt says. Blaine, not particularly addressed but being the only one in the room, nods imperceptibly in answer.

"You're not going to say anything?"

Blaine does not know what to say. The song fades into static and usually he's the one to pop the disc out of the player since Kurt would still be working the Kleenex in his hands to shreds, but they will have none of that today.

Kurt begins to cry; only it is genuine tears of frustration instead of soapy, drama-induced gland secretions. Blaine holds him, strokes his head and says, "Just, just let me take care of you, okay?"

And Kurt nods; it's something he'll never need to remember because his answer to that will never change. Blaine holds him and rocks him, a little awkwardly, humming the tune of _The Way We Were_, over and over, so that Kurt, drowsing, can no longer tell when the song ends or begins.

* * *

><p>They're all seated at the long table laid with the elaborate table runner and silverware Carole reserves for what she terms Important Occasions. His father and Carole, Finn (who has lost his penchant for shapeless plaid alongside much of his muscle bulk) and Rachel (Finn, and Rachel, he repeats to himself, since Blaine has kindly reminded him that after years of deliberation they've wound up apart for good, although Finn's never been the same man since), and Blaine, who's leaning across the table saying something really charming to Rachel, or so it seems from the splendid smile drawn across her face. Rachel was Kurt's guest. (Finn had said, go ahead, I'm fine, although his heart was breaking as he said it he could not say no, for we are none too strong to deny ourselves just one glimpse of possibility, of the beauty that we've missed.) Kurt, bereft of everything but his subtlety, had read all that from his voice, and so invited her for his benefit. Isn't it funny, Kurt thinks, that years later Rachel would be the one he would call most frequently for late night bitching or when he had good news to share? And wasn't it strange that she was no longer whiny (or else he'd gotten so used to it that his definition of 'whiny' no longer stood) and seemed to listen more than she spoke, and yet her hair still fell over the sides of her face in the same old lovely way?<p>

Kurt is looking at them all. The bubbles in his champagne flute tear themselves away from the sides of the glass and rise up to the surface, giving themselves over to air. He can tell from the way Blaine's fingers reach too often for his water glass that he is missing him, and that he should return. But he wants to stay here a little longer, just taking in this scene and holding it within him as one holds a fermata, without crescendo or decrescendo, prolonging what will inevitably fade.

* * *

><p>Blaine's standing in the doorway and watching Kurt bustle about the kitchen, adding, stirring, tasting. He's put on a little weight now, he sees, his ankles are no longer of a ghostly thinness, his wrists are delicate but no longer fragile. There are so many things that can go wrong in the space between you and I, and what more the world? So isn't it funny, that he has chosen to be here, nowhere else but here, where he follows Kurt's feet with his eyes as they tap out the rhythm to some song that he is humming. "Da da da <em>dum<em>," Kurt goes, orchestrating chord progressions with a wooden spatula. He couldn't have been doing it consciously since he's already fallen silent, busying in front of the oven checking on something that smells just divine; the moment is lost on him but not on Blaine, whose eyes are misting up of their own accord, and it's like he's falling in love all over again (how could he ever forget?) because it's the exact same song he had given Kurt a preview of on the piano only yesterday.


End file.
